MANUFACTURING LOCATION IN A POLYCENTRIC URBAN AREA: A STUDY IN THE COMPOSITION AND ATTRACTIVENESS OF EMPLOYMENT SUBCENTERS

Attention has shifted to the role of subsidiary urban centers as the new “spatial nodes” within metropolitan areas as manufacturing employment has dispersed away from its traditional central city locations over the past decades. Understanding the character and evolving functions of these new “centers” is crucial to predicting (or influencing) future metropolitan spatial patterns. This paper explores the nature and role of the principal employment centers within the Dallas-Fort Worth region from the perspective of locational choices by firms in three-digit SIC Manufacturing. First the centers are empirically identified via a methodology that “maps” employment land-use polygons onto a zip code-level geography. The industrial attributes of firms choosing such centers are then investigated using multinomial logit. The general attractiveness to firms in manufacturing of various spatial characteristics of these centers are next studied through a discrete choice framework. Finally, a “mixed” conditional logit model is specified and implemented to identify special affinities between a type of firm and a kind of location. Results of the exercise enable judgment on the utility of the employment center concept and on industrial location behavior in a modem urban context.